Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Bosch, D. (1995) Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture
Since the seventeenth century more and more people have discovered, originally to their surprise, that they could ignore God and the church, yet be none the worse for it. 15
The illusion that human hopes for freedom, justice, and true progress can be realized by relying on reason or human resolve alone, or by the mechanics of economic, technological, or political development, has finally exploded. Enlightenment reason, which had declared itself autonomous and had conferred legitimacy on itself, is now being challenged pp23
Because God is a missionary God, God's people are missionary people. The church's mission is not secondary to its being; the church exists in being sent and in building up itself for its mission (Barth 1956:725. 1 am here following the German original rather than the English translation). As Hoedemaker (1988:169-71, 178f) rightly argues, this means that ecclesiology does not precede missiology; there cannot be church without an intrinsic missionary dimension. And Shenk (1991:107) quotes Emil Brunner's famous adage: "The church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning."
Unless the church of the West begins to understand this, and unless we develop a missionary theology, not just a theology of mission, we will not achieve more than merely patch up the church. We are in need of a missiological agenda for theology, not just a theological agenda for mission; for theology, rightly understood, has no reason to exist other than critically to accompany the missio Dei (see, on this, Bosch 1991:489-98). 32
Mission is more than and different from recruitment to our brand of religion; it is alerting people to the universal reign of God. 33
We will have to do our utmost to resist this temptation [maintenance of religion as private affair]. It belongs to our missionary mandate to ask questions about the use of power in our societies, to unmask those that destroy life, to show concern for the victims of society while at the same time calling to repentante those who have turned them into victims, and to articulate God's active wrath against all that distorts and diminishes human beings and all that exploits, squanders, and disfigures the world for selfishness, greed, and self-centered power. Pp 34
Johannes Aagaard expressed similar sentiments. The soft age of mission, he suggested, had gone. "The days of the missio triumfans have passed and the days of the missio pressa have come .... The decisive missiological questions to which we have to respond will often be put to us by the judges and the prosecutors." Along with Matthew 28, Matthew 10 would now be "the charter for missiological praxis and reflection." 61
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The illusion that human hopes for freedom, justice, and true progress can be realized by relying on reason or human resolve alone, or by the mechanics of economic, technological, or political development, has finally exploded. Enlightenment reason, which had declared itself autonomous and had conferred legitimacy on itself, is now being challenged pp23
Because God is a missionary God, God's people are missionary people. The church's mission is not secondary to its being; the church exists in being sent and in building up itself for its mission (Barth 1956:725. 1 am here following the German original rather than the English translation). As Hoedemaker (1988:169-71, 178f) rightly argues, this means that ecclesiology does not precede missiology; there cannot be church without an intrinsic missionary dimension. And Shenk (1991:107) quotes Emil Brunner's famous adage: "The church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning."
Unless the church of the West begins to understand this, and unless we develop a missionary theology, not just a theology of mission, we will not achieve more than merely patch up the church. We are in need of a missiological agenda for theology, not just a theological agenda for mission; for theology, rightly understood, has no reason to exist other than critically to accompany the missio Dei (see, on this, Bosch 1991:489-98). 32
Mission is more than and different from recruitment to our brand of religion; it is alerting people to the universal reign of God. 33
We will have to do our utmost to resist this temptation [maintenance of religion as private affair]. It belongs to our missionary mandate to ask questions about the use of power in our societies, to unmask those that destroy life, to show concern for the victims of society while at the same time calling to repentante those who have turned them into victims, and to articulate God's active wrath against all that distorts and diminishes human beings and all that exploits, squanders, and disfigures the world for selfishness, greed, and self-centered power. Pp 34
Johannes Aagaard expressed similar sentiments. The soft age of mission, he suggested, had gone. "The days of the missio triumfans have passed and the days of the missio pressa have come .... The decisive missiological questions to which we have to respond will often be put to us by the judges and the prosecutors." Along with Matthew 28, Matthew 10 would now be "the charter for missiological praxis and reflection." 61
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